Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Romans · About this commentary
Salvation Is Nearer Now
Romans 13:11-14
11 Do this, knowing the time, that it is already time for you to awaken out of sleep, for salvation is now nearer to us than when we first believed. · WEB
The ethics get a clock — night far gone, day near — and the last instruction is to put on a person and stop provisioning the flesh.
Do this, knowing the time, that it is already time for you to awaken out of sleep, for salvation is now nearer to us than when we first believed.
The ethics receive their clock. Everything commanded since 12:1 is now set against the hour: knowing the time — the kairos, the season of God's schedule — and the season is late. The sentence's logic is simple and its edge is permanent: salvation is now nearer than when we first believed. Every day of faith is a day closer to the completed salvation the letter has kept in future tense Romans 5:9 Romans 8:23 — the redemption of the body, the glory to be revealed. Whatever the interval, its direction is fixed and its remainder only shrinks.
The night is far gone, and the day is near Romans 13:12. The image places the present at the last watch — darkness still real, dawn already graying the line of the hills — and the commands follow the hour: let's therefore throw off the deeds of darkness, and let's put on the armor of light.
Throw off and put on — the dressing verbs of a man rising: night-things flung aside, day-clothes taken up. And the day-clothes are armor — the morning is not a parade but a post; light is worn for battle, the same weapons-language as the members presented to God Romans 6:13.
Verse 13 names what belongs to the night, in three pairs: not in reveling and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and lustful acts, and not in strife and jealousy. The first two pairs are the night-life anyone would list; the third pair — strife and jealousy — is filed with them without a seam, church-sins shelved beside carousing, as the vice list of chapter 1 shelved gossip with murder Romans 1:29.
And the final instruction gathers the whole passage into one act: but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, for its lusts Romans 13:14.
Put on — not armor now but a person: Christ himself as the garment, the union of chapter 6 worn daily Romans 6:11. And the negative is quartermaster's language: make no provision — stop supplying the flesh's campaigns, cut the logistics of sin rather than merely resisting at the point of attack. A famous conversion turned on this sentence read in a garden; its power is unspent.
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